What happened a few days ago in Zanjan should wake us all up. This is not the first time that a public official violates a young woman, nor is this confined to Iran, or limited to a deputy university chancellor or a police superintendent who presented themselves as pious and law-abiding citizens in public while privately engaging in heinous acts. If such behavior began with the poet Hafez, then it has a history of at least six hundred years.
The use of publicly unaccepted behavior to expose those in power is not a new even in politics. What is relatively new is that someone filmed an event using a mobile phone and another person posted it on You Tube, making it instantly available around the world. Forty thousand people are recorded to have accessed the site in four hours. What all this means is that a crime committed by a deputy university chancellor appointed by Ahmadinejad’s minister of science, Mr. Zahedi, became a worldwide event in an instant. If someone asked why is Mr. Zahedi or Mr. Ahmadinejad dragged into this, this is my response: It is because these individuals claim to be the pious, of having a pious administration and boast spending money on the missing twelfth Shiite saint, while at the same time belittling and negating the world for being “corrupt”. It is because these people have put themselves at the center of the world and who ever toes their line will be protected by them as if their credentials have been approved by the missing Shiite imam. If someone falls out, then he is announced to be the enemy of the very same saint.
Every society wakes up to a tune. Some to the tune of church bells, while others to the calls of the Moazen. Still others wake up to a gentle breeze.
But we Iranians, who seem to disregard our ancient history whose grandeur is completely lacking today and whose triumphs have not passed on to our generation, have only a tiny interest in this fatherland and do not care about its past which is occasionally aired to fool the masses. But we cannot continue to pretend to be living in the Stone Age. A mobile phone is not just something that you take out of its box and plug it in and call our home. A mobile phone means a documentary, photos, transmission, dissemination, connection to the rest of the world, etc. And all of this without recourse. If you wish, you can continue to practice your ancient habits and deny modern tools and needs, to issue orders to find “the trouble source”, order to shut down websites, issue fatwas to kill, etc. But these will not resolve your problems or solve things. Yes, issues can be resolved, but not this way.
The film on You Tube shows how a university authority who ordered students around at one time, was suddenly trapped and then fell to the mercy of the very same students he was bullying. All of this because of a single mobile phone.
Look at the impact of the Internet since it became a national and public tool of the Iranian people since eight years ago. Look at the impact it has had on our social life. One of its changes is that until a few years ago people in power regularly smeared and defamed their opponents using any language they wished. Today, the same, people are scared. Unless of course they are like Keyhan newspaper (state appointed daily) and its followers who have given up on the future.
If one counted the number of individuals who in recent years made slanderous accusations in their speeches, interviews, and public talks against others, they are countless. Nobody has bothered to count them. Nobody plans to. But all you have to do is look at the number of cautions that have been recently issued about being slanderous and defamatory with the aim of protecting people’s image and respect, and you will see the power of the mobile phone.
